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Sun Tech Days Beijing - Day 1 Report

1500 developers kick started 10th anniversary Tech Day event at the Beijing International Convention Center earlier today.

Joey Shen, Angela Caicedo, Doris Chen and Chuk Munn Lee demonstrated Swing/Java2D, Sun SPOTs, jMaki and JavaFX demo respectively as part of the demo showcase. All the demos were really good and showcased different technologies from Sun. I personally liked Sun SPOT demo which showcased how Robosapiens can be easily controlled using the JVM. It very well resonated with "Internet of Things" that Lionel Kim (President Greater China and COO APAC Sun Microsystems) mentioned in his keynote earlier in the morning.

According to Lionel, there are three factors driving global innovation:

• Web.next - The key point here is that currently the major producer/consumer of content on the Internet are people. But very soon it'll be an Internet of things where different "things" are interacting on the Web fueled by all the innovations happening in Web.next.
• Age of the startups - Facebook valued at $ 15 billion has already changed the current landscape and similar companies are going to drive the needs for next generation.

• Rise of communities - Time magazine awarded YOU (community) as Person of The Year award for 2006. And that indeed is the most important factor in driving innovation.

Carla provided a great coverage of Jim Hughes keynote (during which I was busy with local translators for my upcoming session :) This is the 10th anniversary year of Tech Days and we celebrated by cutting a birthday cake. There is lot of backstage work (audio, video, rehearsal, logistics and all sort of things) that often goes unnoticed and some of the photographs below highlight that work.

Right after the keynote, I gave a talk on "Java EE5, GlassFish and Their Future" and the slides are available here. It was great talking about GlassFish to a 560 capacity room full of audience. Leon showed a demo of localized version of GlassFish and how it can be configured in a clustered environment. Jim Jiang offered to give away 10 copies of his recently published book on GlassFish. You can order it online here. Jim Jiang and Wang Yu are the primary authors with content contributed from Jason Huang, Ada Li, Liang Ye and Evrin Yan. It was great meeting most of these individuals face-to-face. If you missed being one of the lucky winners of the book, then attend GlassFish Day on Saturday, Nov 3 and there will be many more copies distributed.

I also attended Chuk's talk on Metro and REST. He really presented the concept very well and it was fun seeing somebody else present Metro :)

I spent rest of the day talking to people on the GlassFish booth. Once again, Jim Jiang helped me connect with the local audience. I'll prepare a summary of the  questions and then provide answers to them in a subsequent blog. In the meanwhile, here are some links for you to get started:

• GlassFish Multi-lingual download
• TheAquarium in Chinese
• GlassFish Forum

The evening ended with Yanjing Beer and Beijing Duck dinner. And as always, enjoy the pictures from through out the day:

Follow the complete coverage in Sun Tech Days Event blog.

Technorati: conf suntechdays metro webservices jmaki web2.0 glassfish netbeans beijing

Posted by Arun Gupta in webservices  |  Comments[0]

Travel Tips to Beijing

I arrived in Beijing for Sun Tech Days earlier this week. Here are some travel tips:

1. The Beijing city has Tina'anmen Square and Forbidden City at it's center. Rest of the city is structured in multiple ring roads around the center. Each tourist place can be located as between X and Y ring road easily.
2. If you are a Wells Fargo banker, take the Access Code from Customer Service before boarding the flight. This code allows you to talk to a Wells Fargo banker in USA from anywhere in China. There are separate codes for North and South China. Dial the access code, get the operator, mention the 800-869-TO-WELLS and voila you are connected to the network.
3. Nichole & Renita were gracious to let me share the ride from airport to the hotel so I missed that part of the experience. But it's recommended to walk out of the airport and get a Taxi from the Taxi Stand instead of getting lost in rooks within the airport. It's also recommended to have your hotel name written in Mandarin because the Taxi Drivers may not be able to read/speak English. Once you checked into the hotel you can use your hotel key to show the address (which has the address written in Chinese) to move around the city.
4. Took a guided tour from the hotel to Forbidden City and Great Wall of China. It covered Transportation, Lunch, Parking tickets and Tolls and an English-speaking guide. You can do the same using a private taxi but it may turn out to be slightly costly and most likely you will not get an Mandarin-speaking driver and therefore no guide :) As part of the standard tour, they may take you to a Silk Emporium and Jade Factory, they are fun places just to learn how they are all manufactured.
5. Shopping is a LOT of fun in Beijing. There is a great variety of clothes, toys, gadgets, etc. at local shops. And no shopping is complete without bargaining and that too HARD bargaining. For example when shopping at touristy places, such as street-side shops near Great Wall, bargain HARD. The rule that I followed was to quote the price to 10% of the original. Here are some examples:
    

   Item	Quoted	Paid
   Tee-shirts	1 for 130 RMB	3 for 50 RMB
   Cashmere Scarf (can't be original ;)	1 for 160 RMB	5 for 80 RMB
   Great Wall Memento	350 RMB	20 RMB
   Refrigerator Magnet	20 RMB	5 RMB

   Generally the shopkeepers will give a counter offer but be straight-faced and maintain your price. To keep it easy, just stick to your price and pretend walk away. In all the cases, I was approached with my quoted price :)

6. If you plan to visit Great Wall during November, make sure to carry good warm clothing including gloves and an ear-long cap and a good hiking/walking shoe. It is extremely windy and certain portions of the Wall are really steep.

7. There is no tipping in restaurants and taxi. Don't be surprised if you see a confused look on the person serving if you leave the tip.

And here are the pictures so far:

Sun Tech Days Beijing kick started this morning and a subsequent entry will talk about that.

Technorati: conf traveltips beijing suntechdays

Posted by Arun Gupta in Finance  |  Comments[1]